Simmons Park

Sydney Simmons -
The man behind Simmons Park By Paul Rendell

 

Sydney was born in the cottage opposite the information centre, now Victorian Pantry Tea Rooms. He lived in Okehampton for about six years, yet later in life he gave so much to the market town. Living next to the White Hart Hotel must have been exciting for a young boy as stage coaches came and then went off to far flung places like Exeter and London. This seemed to spark an interest in travelling for the young Simmons, at the age of five, he went to Exeter with his mother. They left Okehampton at eight in the evening in a wagon drawn by three horses and arrived in the city at seven the next day. What an adventure this must have been for Sydney.

In about 1846 he was sent away to a private school in Lincolnshire where he stayed for four or five years. He returned to Okehampton in 1851 because his father had died. His mother, brother and two sisters, Mary Ann and Sophia continued to run the printing business but Sydney moved to Devonport in Plymouth. Here he took up an apprenticeship with a drapery firm and was learning that business for the next ten years. In 1862 at the age of 22 he went to London to work for a large carpet manufacturing company, this was the turning point for Simmons. He joined the Sydney Simmons Queen's Westminster Volunteers and became a marksman and was taken in 1907 on duty when the Prince of Wales, later to be Edward VII, brought his bride Alexandra, to London.

 

 

The big break was in 1862, when Sydney was sent to America as a sales representative for the carpet company. Over the next 10 years he travelled across America and Canada for the company, doing around 30,000 miles some years. During this time he acquired the rights to a mechanical process for cleaning carpets and in 1888 he returned to London. He bought a house in Finchley, called it 'Okehampton' and then got married. Around this time he started two companies, The Patent Steam Carpet Beating Company and The Compressed Air Carpet and Tapestry Cleaning Company. They became very successful, making him a wealthy man.